The Very Important Story of Communist Coca-Cola

You've never tried White Coke before. Very few people have even sipped the elusive elixir—except for the Marshal of the Soviet Union, Georgy Zhukov. After Dwight Eisenhower gave the Communist leader a can of Coca-Cola, Zhukov found himself obsessed with the classic American drink. And that's where the problem began.

Zhukov made the very odd executive decision to create a colorless coke that tasted the same as the original formula. Why?  Because Coke was seen by the Communists as a symbol for American Imperialism. So Zhukov made a request to have a colorless version of the soda made, as it resembled vodka, a far more culturally acceptable drink in the Soviet Union at that time...or any time, for that matter. 

Zhukov's people contacted President Harry Truman, who then contacted James Farley, the chairman of the Board of the Coca-Cola Export Corporation. So Farley tasked the technical supervisor of Coke with finding a way to remove the soda's iconic caramel color. Eventually they found a chemist who successfully removed the color and packaged a colorless version of the soda using straight, clear glass bottles topped with a white cap with a red star in the middle.

That's the story of White Communist Coke. Drink up, comrade.

Jeremy Glass is the Vice editor for Supercompressor and tips his hat to Reddit for uncovering this dynamite little story on Wikipedia. Oh, Internet.